Triggers
I am triggered.
I AM TRIGGERED. Seems like everyone is triggered by something these days, and then lets us all know about it. Am I right? Announcing it often can definitely be annoying, right? The fact of the matter is…. I HOPE you do feel triggered. Feeling triggered is normal and actually NOT problematic. In fact, if you aren’t triggered, be very concerned, and definitely check your pulse. Are you even alive?
Very simply put, when you feel triggered, often it is because the emotional part of your brain is reminded of a past hurt or trauma. NORMAL. Want to know where we get into trouble? When your emotional brain is hijacked, and you don’t have the skill to regulate your emotions, that is problematic.
Hijacked Brain: Evidence of Your Logic Brain Going Offline to Gain Felt Safety
Let me give you an example from my personal life. Recently, there was a Crowdstrike outage that caused a lot of delays and wreaked havoc in airports, banks, and hospitals. Many (like me) were inconvenienced in their travel plans. For me, the first leg of my flight back home from Nevada was on time and smooth. My connecting flight… not so much. My 3-hour layover continued to be delayed. One delay notification after another (5 in all) had me on a 7-hour layover and arriving home by 2 am. Did I feel triggered during my 7-hour airport delay in Phoenix? I sure did. Did I allow it to have power over me? NOPE. It was beyond my control, out of my hands, and there were many at the airport in a much worse scenario than I. My emotional brain was not hijacked because I have practiced the art of letting go and flipping scripts. About halfway through my 7-hour delay, on the phone with a friend, he asked me, “How do you feel?” “In my body, I feel tight, tired.” I also had a chronic sore throat. Then I said, “In my soul, I feel connected, calm, peaceful, and even joyful.” Let me be clear, there was still a trigger, I felt a tinge of dysregulation. I felt anxious about getting home in time for my clients, and worried over not feeling well physically. I just wanted my bed! Paying attention to my feelings and where I was feeling them ushered in the calm. It is the beginning of the REST technique.
REST technique offers the opportunity to BE with my uncomfortable emotions, and tell myself a productive and positive story. This is only one tactic I use to find peace, calm, and joy in most circumstances. Was it easy to get here? NOPE. It took tremendous practice!
There was a time many years ago when a situation like the one described above would have literally sent me into an explosive state. A broken nail would have ruined my day. A harsh word spoken over me would have ruined my week or even sent me into a tailspin for weeks. Does this sound familiar?
The truth is: that I allowed the “ruin.” I gave so much of my power away. I was like the man described in the Bible who was driven and tossed about by the sea. This double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. I was unstable in all of my ways because I had no strategy for peace. I had no roadmap to calm my storm. Until one day, I recalibrated with the help of an amazing life coach.
Now for the sciencey part
Have you ever heard that old saying, “He flipped his lid?” or “He blew his top?” When your “lid” flips, you have been triggered, and then not yet exercised the skill of self-regulation. Your logical brain goes offline to gain a sense of safety. Some of you may have some trauma or hurts that merit therapy to desensitize and regulate your nervous system. (I sure did). That being said, Every single time, you can learn new tools for self-regulation. For those who really are overcome by a trigger and have yet to learn how to respond, and NOT react, please hear me. You are not bad. You are just learning and you need help. You are the toddler who needs to learn how to ride the tricycle before the two-wheeler. It is normal for where you are in your process. Allow me to help you understand why you feel so overcome with emotional reactivity.
I want you to think of a time when you recently felt triggered, and maybe you even reacted in a way you now wish you had not. Think of that time. What happened is that your nervous system remembered a younger version of you when something similar happened to you. Your emotional brain sends the alert that you are in danger, trapped, stuck, in trouble, abandoned, or (fill in the blank with any other negative message you receive internally). The emotional brain is the part of your brain in charge of breathing, heart rate, fear, hate, lust, fight, flight, and freeze.
When this part revs up in survival mode, it activates quickly with zero logic.
This is when you “lose your mind.”
Your “top blows” and anything that the logical executive function part of your brain has to offer is inaccessible. These inaccessible functions that you need to be in full operation mode are rationale, body control, empathy, reflection, regulation, reasoning, and control. Instead, when you blow that top, your logical brain has (much like the Crowdstrike debacle) gone offline.
With the older, more primal emotional part of your brain running the show, you may experience one or more of the following trauma responses:
Fight- Angry outbursts, controlling, explosive behaviors, irritability, self-harm.
Flight- Workaholic, OCD, panic, anxiety, avoidance, perfectionistic, hyperactive, cannot sit still
Freeze- Stuck, paralyzed decision making, disassociation, isolation, numbing behaviors, indecision, sleeps a lot.
Fawn- People please, overwhelmed often, no boundaries, identity crisis, appeasing others, strong inner critic.
Most of my clients operate in the fawn system.
Allowing this part of your brain to run the show allows the inner child in you to take center stage and control every thought and action. That child is driving the car! Would you let your child drive a car? EXACTLY! You need to step back into your adult self, and be in charge, and to do that you’ve got to get your logical brain back online.
You will hurt the ones closest to you when your emotional brain is in charge.
If you do not get your logical brain back online, you will at minimum emotionally injure the ones you love the most. I would recommend a trauma therapist to help you get started in this healing process. If this resonates with you, then It’s a good idea to get in with a therapist or a coach to help you heal your nervous system so that when you do feel stimulated, you are in a space to create some distance between the stimulus and response. This is where wisdom lives.
The distance between the stimulus and response is wisdom.
While you wait to get into therapy, or you have a therapist or coach already, below is a discipline for you to practice in the in-between. Practice this next time you feel yourself stimulated by an uncomfortable emotion. You are not helpless or powerless. It is time to take your power back! You must first create the space for yourself to take this action below.
Four steps to Empower yourself and regulate your emotions:
Become Aware: what is happening in your body
Pause: gain more awareness to calm the nervous system
Agency: make a choice. You always have a choice. Accept how it is.
change YOU in this
Leave literally or figuratively to preserve your peace
Aligned action: Is this action aligned with what I want or in congruence with my core values, boundaries, or desire to take responsibility for you in this matter)
Take action from your place of agency.
I want you to know that you reader, are so much stronger than you think you are. You just may not know it yet, or you need a new tool in your toolbelt. Perhaps you need a better map and a little help on that journey. I am always here for you. Sending you so much love and support.
Shelli
